Golden Era Building Materials...

[FinalVestige79]

What kind of building materials were popular in the golden era? I know that brick and wood were. I have aspirations of building my own vintage inspired house...so I figured I'd start early. This plan is more than a few years from now...but victory favors the prepared.

A lounger sent me this site for reference. I learned alot of the different features of homes, and from the shape and construction. But it made me really sad to know these homes are rotting away. I am open to whatever thoughts and suggestions you guys and dolls got!

http://www.100abandonedhouses.com/

 

[Jay]

Start with some old newspapers for insulation, or movie posters if you'd like to make an investment for future generations. Lath and plaster walls are typical of the period, with some horsehair mixed in to help hold it together...


Edit: Did you mean inside or outside? If outside, then anything, just about. Stone, brick, wood, logs, tarpaper, and that stuff that's like a shingle, but a big sheet. Pretty much anything outside of vinyl or aluminum siding.

 

[FinalVestige79]

Thanks! Both in and out actually.

 

[Chas]

Exterior glass stucco was very popular in the 40's,50's & 60's

Cedar Shingles have been around since...forever. They also have excellent insulating properties, weather very nicely and look good. I won't reccomend them to anyone who lives in an area prone to wildfires or such-like, however.

You are not going to find quality interior mouldings in many places, but this company makes vintage repro. mouldings Vintage Mouldings

Look around for your area for a demolition company that is busy ripping down old homes for condos. Chances are you can find some sweet stuff.

 

[MPicciotto]

Build your walls using "Balloon Construction" It's not only easier and sturdier but allows fire to travel faster through your house. You also want to use lots of Asbestos. Use it in tile form as a backing for electrical panels, use it in glue form for your linoleum tile and as a roofing mastic to repair holes from tree branches. Don't forget to use only 2 conductors in your wiring with the metal conduit as your ground

But not seriously here are some suggestions:

In the US studded wall construction hasn't changed a whole lot. True most builders don't do "Balloon Construction" anymore. But you can as long as you install fire blocks, which is not hard to do at all. Like others said it's what's on the outside and interior of the walls that has changed. Plaster and Lath, siding types. In the wiring arena anywhere you will have exposed wiring like in the basement you could run modern BX or armored cable. It is modern safe wire, 2-conductor + ground but run in a metal conduit very much like what was coming into use in the 40's. Plywood wasn't used for much besides aircraft at the time so your sub flooring was planks of wood run at an angle to the floor joist then the finish wood floor run perpendicular to the joist above that. Similar concept in the roof, the sub roofing was planks run perpendicular to the rafters usually spaced a few inches apart and then the cedar shingles applied. Ironically enough newspapers was mentioned as an insulation. And we are shifting back to ground newspaper for blown in insulation in walls and attics actually.

Matt

 

[kampkatz]

Those abandoned home photos are quite sad. If those old walls could talk there would be quite a few stories to tell, some worthy of being made into films, no doubt. As far a building materials go, they have already been mentioned for the most part. One important feature is that the framing was all rough cut to actual dimensions, i.e. 2 by 4,etc. No smooth finish on wall studding. Exterior brick walls were ALL brick. My 1892 Queen Anne is 3 layers of brick with plaster directly on the interior side. You don't want to use original wiring. Knob and tube is quaint, but today's codes keep safety in mind(although k & t would never short out). Plumbing today is mostly PVC which saves on the cost of copper and cast iron(which eventually rusts). A modern slate roof is less likely to fall apart than those of a century ago since the newer nails should not rust like the old ones did, then the slate slid to the ground. Good luck.

 

[reetpleat]

Unless you do it yourself, vintage building methods would be prohibitively expensive. However, you certainly can use a lot of modern methods and materials, but make it look old.

Or, you could restore an old classic. That is affordable and always cool.

 

[Haversack]

A lot of the answer is going to depend on where and when, and also if you mean structural materials or finish materials. Reason being for the former is that there was, (and is), a lot of provincialism in residential construction. The preferred methods of construction vary considerably by region. Second, the years between 1920 and 1950 saw the introduction of a whole range of new building materials and practices. WWII and the post-war shortages led to a lot of innovation and short-cuts.

Out here on the West Coast, people had begun to figure out that structural masonry was not a good idea. The 1933 Long Beach Earthquake underlined this. Besides, high quality structural lumber was plentiful and inexpensive. Other parts of the country, structural masonry was preferred.

A couple of suggestions: The 1920s saw a huge amount of residential construction in most parts of the country. Most cities have entire neighborhoods which were built at this time. Find out which ones they were in your area and take a drive. In some places like Sacramento, California, these neighborhoods are still highly desirable. (e.g. Land Park, the Forties). The other is to look at house plan books of the era. Dover Publishing has several. Here are a couple:
http://store.doverpublications.com/0486407314.html

http://store.doverpublications.com/0486441318.html

These will give you something of the feel you might be looking for. One thing to bear in mind is that it wasn't just the materials or ornament that make a house of that era read right, it was the massing and proportions as well.

One 'style' that was very popular then was "------ Revival". Colonial, Tudor, Mediterranian, Spanish colonial, Dutch colonial, Norman, etc. styles of architecture were studied and used by the builders of the day, (sometimes very skillfully), to create homes that would emotionally appeal to people through exoticism, stability, regionalism, etc. This will affect your materials list as well.

 

[Paisley]

What kind of building materials were popular in the golden era? I know that brick and wood were. I have aspirations of building my own vintage inspired house...so I figured I'd start early. This plan is more than a few years from now...but victory favors the prepared.

A lounger sent me this site for reference. I learned alot of the different features of homes, and from the shape and construction. But it made me really sad to know these homes are rotting away. I am open to whatever thoughts and suggestions you guys and dolls got!

http://www.100abandonedhouses.com/

For 13 years, I've owned and lived in a house built in 1910. My advice: take advantage of modern materials. My new metal garage door is way better than the old sagging, rotting, wooden ones were. The new cement board behind and beneath the bathroom tile won't rot. The asphalt shingles won't catch fire. I only wish I had insulated walls and a polyurethane finished floor.

Don't get me wrong--my little house is solidly built and has survived, without a creak, two 100-year blizzards that dropped three feet of snow. But so could almost every other house in Denver.

Another suggestion is, if you're going to build a new house, build it on solid ground. Avoid bentonite and places that tend to flood.

If you're going to renovate, estimate how much time and money it will take. Then triple each amount, and that will be about right.

Last, and most important, do one project at a time.

 

[Diamondback]

Think of it this way, you can have the best of both worlds, old and new--it just means you design a "modern engineering and materials" structure, and then wrap it in a vintage-inspired shell.

I'm working on a similar design-project myself, but am struggling with ideas for an overall style to complement a roof covered in solar cells.

----------------
Now playing: James Horner - Escobedo's New Friend
via FoxyTunes

 

[donCarlos]

I had a chance to demolish a 1940´s family house. It was fun, we managed to tear the house down in less than 8 hours

The materials I noted were ordinary bricks, concrete and wood, the only interesting thing being quite thick layer of reed and dross under the floor - definitely isolation layers, pretty common back then, because it was cheap and universal. And no asbestos anywhere in the building

 

[BinkieBaumont]

A local DECO STYLE church from 1939 its brick faced with FAKE stone tiles

 

[vitanola]

Start with some old newspapers for insulation, or movie posters if you'd like to make an investment for future generations. Lath and plaster walls are typical of the period, with some horsehair mixed in to help hold it together...


Edit: Did you mean inside or outside? If outside, then anything, just about. Stone, brick, wood, logs, tarpaper, and that stuff that's like a shingle, but a big sheet. Pretty much anything outside of vinyl or aluminum siding.

Actually, by the 1930's and 1940's wood lath and hair plaster were an anachronism. Better construction used a three-coat plaster job over expanded metal lath, with a cementitious brown (base) coat , a gypsum scratch coat and a surface of Keene's Cement. These walls are incredibly durable, almost waterproof. The hair fiber used in earlier calcined plasters was replaced with Asbestos flock, unfortunately. In the best quality modern work, a similar technique is used, with ceramic or graphite fibers substituted for the now outlawed asbestos. Such high-quality modern plaster work costs about $2.00/sq.ft here in the Midwestern US, about three times the cost of finished wall-board.

In the 1930's, cheaper work would have used wall-board with a skim coat. This is a good alternative for modern construction, actually. It combines the advantages of both the old and modern techniques. The best practice uses two layers of 1/2", 3/8", or even 5/8" wallboard, with the first layer fastened to the studs with screws, and the second layer glued in place. The walls are then skim coated, first with lightweight (air entrained) skim coat, and then with Keene's Cement. This technique produces a sturdy, long-lasting wall which will be forever free of screw-pops, and which has the slightly irregular, hard surface characteristic of good three-coat plaster work. It generally costs a bit less than twice the cost of plain drywall, much less if you do the hang yourself.